


A Man's Duty

by akathecentimetre



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-04
Updated: 2014-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-11 02:54:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akathecentimetre/pseuds/akathecentimetre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Halfway back to Paris, d'Artagnan turns around. </p><p>  <i>Episode 3 'missing scenes,' and spoilers!</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Man's Duty

It doesn't feel right to be leaving the house, no matter their hurry. Not the way it looks in the pale mid-afternoon, with the windows dark and damaged curtains askew, its doors hanging open and gaping, as though waiting to devour its owner upon his return. d’Artagnan gets up on his horse as slowly as possible, follows some way behind the others and Bonnaire, waiting as long as he can to see if he can see Athos riding through the trees before he is finally forced to spur his horse forward to join the others on the road. 

The journey proceeds much as he expects. Porthos is still in pain, and deliberately keeps Aramis between him and the disgraced pittance of a man that is Bonnaire on his shabby little mule. Aramis is quiet for the most part, but his hand never strays from the hilt of his sword. d’Artagnan cannot stand the silence. 

“We should go back,” he mutters after two hours have passed and dusk is starting to darken the trees around him. “He’s been too long.”

Porthos shifts uncomfortably in his saddle. “He can take care of himself.”

“Absolutely,” Aramis agrees, and without another word, whips up Bonnaire’s mule so they are now traveling at a trot.

d’Artagnan cannot bear to see this, despite the fact that he knows the two of them are hurting, both wrapped up in Porthos’s anguish. The things Athos said in the tussle back at the manor, and the agony in Porthos’s shoulder, have rendered them incapable of dealing with anything else. Bonnaire’s cursed drawings have ruined everything. He can sense their anger, and their shame, that this weasel of a human being has prevented them from being there to pull Athos out of the bottom of whichever bottle he is, no doubt, emptying at that very moment. 

Paradoxically, given how desperate he has become to be one of them, too, it is his very otherness which, in this moment, gives him the courage to turn his horse around, jab his heels hard into its flanks, canter away through the now pitch-black woods and disregard the shout of surprised warning from Aramis. If they will not – can not – help, he will try. 

He smells the smoke, and sees the clouds of dark red across the sky, long before he reaches the mansion. There is the sound of quiet sobbing in one of the houses in the village as he charges through it.

He pulls Athos, crumpled and blackened, out of the flames; listens in complete bewilderment, and dawning horror, to his incoherent explanations. The water he pours over the musketeer’s face does nothing to bring him out of his stupor.

His first rational thought, as Athos slumps into an exhausted, drunken slumber right there next to him in the smoke-filled forecourt, is that it’s incredible that the others do not know.

And then he corrects himself, thinks _Of course they know,_ for Porthos and Aramis are far from stupid. They certainly aren’t stupid enough to think their friend and lieutenant is whole, and he’s sure that they’ve known all along, through the binges and hangovers and silence, what happened here. They may not know the details that d’Artagnan has just heard, and which ring in his ears like they’re his own death sentence; but they know. They certainly know not to ask, not to provoke this grief, not to cause fresh wounds. 

He drags Athos as far away from the decimated, smoldering manor as he can, tethers the horses at the edge of a field – thankfully there are others to choose from besides the one where the skeletal, looming tree stands – and then settles down to keep watch. The wild grasses in which Athos sleeps are thick with the promise of spring. Even in the dark, d’Artagnan can still sense the beauty of the land around them. In the summer, it must have been exquisite. 

Athos stirs only once, murmuring a name that d’Artagnan does not catch, and then, around dawn, d’Artagnan himself falls into a doze. He startles awake a few hours later, as the sky is starting to turn from grey to blue, as Athos stumbles upright from the ground, hair askew and limbs swinging to try to keep his balance. 

“Athos?” d’Artagnan coughs, his voice thick with sleep.

His friend grunts. “I must wash.”

There is nothing they can do until they get back to Paris about the soot-stained leather, but there is a river meandering slowly along the edge of the property behind the copse where they have slept. Athos’s weapons and uniform tumble into sorry black and blue heaps; he makes a desultory effort at washing his shirt before he gives up and tosses it across a bush to dry. Before he walks into the water, he stops, turns, and, taking the chain from around his neck, holds out his locket to d’Artagnan.

“Hold this for me.”

d’Artagnan clutches it so hard in his fist that his nails leave angry marks on his palm. Besides the terror at what might happen should he drop it, he’s not sure Athos could have asked a greater honor of him. He knows, just as well as the others and despite their short acquaintance, what it means. 

He’s seen a lot of Porthos and Aramis’s scars during his time at the barracks, so far. They are not the sort of men to shy away from display of any kind, nor to inconvenience themselves with such a piffling thing as privacy in the midst of the hubbub of the regiment; so, he has seen their backs, their arms, seen them wash and rib each other, and pay sly compliments. Athos is quite a different matter. d’Artagnan cannot remember a time when he’s seen any part of Athos’s skin besides his hands and that strip they all bear down the front of their shirts. He is pale, now, almost extremely so, in the morning light as he sluices the smoke-stains and scorchmarks from his arms. Aramis and Porthos bear their scars proudly, the dark ridges of skin proclaiming their battles. Athos has several of his own, but they reveal themselves only as pale, whiter lines. 

Athos dips down entirely underneath the water, still black with a late winter chill, and stays down for so long that d’Artagnan begins to worry if he’ll have to effect another rescue before he finally splutters back to the surface. Emerging, blinking against the sun, d’Artagnan wonders whether this is what Athos looked like five years ago, clean and awake and straightening his shoulders proudly against the morning. It is not a sight he is familiar with. 

Athos pulls on his trousers, nods with something approaching approval, and takes the locket back from d’Artagnan. The Gascon can see him wince as the chain touches his burned temple, shiver as the cold metal hits his chest. “I suppose I should thank you for finding me.”

“‘Suppose’?” d’Artagnan smiles. “Such ingratitude.”

“You may suppose much of me,” Athos rasps, his eyes not meeting d’Artagnan’s as he pulls on his dripping shirt, shrugs on the heavy coat, and starts to work on the myriad collection of buckles. “But know this. I do not consider myself capable of being saved.” 

He pauses, and just as d’Artagnan is about to dredge up an indignant retort, adds, so quietly, “Except by you. All three of you.”

He turns away from where d’Artagnan sits, shellshocked, and lifts one of their discarded saddles onto his horse. The mask of command – of that dreaded idea, duty – has fallen back down upon him like a shroud. “We should go. Paris is still a few hours away, and the others will be expecting us.”

d’Artagnan scrambles up, saddles his own horse, mounts up and follows Athos through the field. Their horses crush wild flowers beneath their hooves. He feels he knows now, more than ever, what it means to follow this man, to follow this particular shadow across France. 

There is too much at stake, too much honor in the struggle to save this man, for him ever to stray from his path. He will never prove disloyal. 

And he knows that in this, he is not alone.

**FIN**

**Author's Note:**

> No doubt this idea occurred to many people right away after watching the episode - apologies if I've pipped others to the post!


End file.
